Contemporary press reports and more recent commentators have contrasted Heywood's pardon with the fate of his fellow prisoners who were hanged, all lower-deck sailors without wealth or family influence and who lacked legal counsel.

The family lived for several years in Whitehaven, England before the father's appointment as agent for the Duke of Atholl's Manx properties brought them back to Douglas.

He would now have to take the alternative, much longer route to the Pacific, sailing first to Cape Town and then south of Australia and New Zealand, before working northwards to Tahiti.

[18] They would live here throughout the Tahiti sojourn, a "situation of comfort and privilege" which, according to historian Richard Hough, was much envied by those required to spend their nights on the ship.

Bligh was impatient to be away, but in Hough's words he "failed to anticipate how his company would react to the severity and austerity of life at sea ... after five dissolute, hedonistic months at Tahiti".

[38] As Bounty sailed slowly towards Tubuai, Bligh's launch, overcoming many dangers and hardships, made its way steadily towards civilisation and reached Coupang (now Kupang), on Timor, on 14 June 1789.

Despite a hostile reception from the island's natives Christian spent several days surveying the land and selecting a site for a fort before taking Bounty on to Tahiti.

[41] The attempt to establish a colony on Tubuai was unsuccessful; the repeated raids by the mutineers for "wives" and the near-mutinous dissatisfaction of the duped Tahitians wrecked Christian's plans.

Heywood and 15 others now decided that they would remain in Tahiti and risk the consequences of discovery,[43] while Christian, with eight mutineers and many Tahitian men and women, took off in Bounty for an unrevealed destination.

[45] Matthew Thompson and former master-at-arms Charles Churchill chose to lead drunken and generally dissolute lives which ended in the violent deaths of both.

Heywood wrote: "The heat ... was so intense that the sweat frequently ran in streams to the scuppers, and produced maggots in a short time ... and the two necessary tubs which were constantly kept in place helped to render our situation truly disagreeable.

[54] Physical attacks from natives were frequent; early in August Edwards abandoned the search and headed for the Dutch East Indies via the Torres Strait.

The 99 survivors, including ten prisoners, recovered on a nearby island where they stayed for two nights before embarking on an open-boat journey which largely followed Bligh's course of two years earlier.

During a seven-week stay in Batavia confined aboard a Dutch East India Company ship, most of the prisoners, including Heywood, were allowed on deck only twice.

[60][61] Following Heywood's arrival in Portsmouth his family sought help from their wide circle of influential friends, and set out to secure the best available legal counsel.

By chance another Heywood naval relative by marriage, Captain Albemarle Bertie, was in Portsmouth Harbour with his ship HMS Edgar, moored alongside Hector.

Accused with Heywood were Joseph Coleman, Thomas McIntosh and Charles Norman, all of whom had been exonerated in Bligh's account and could confidently expect acquittal, as could Michael Byrne, the nearly blind ship's fiddler.

The court martial board was presided over by Lord Hood, naval commander-in-chief at Portsmouth, and included Pasley's friend George Montagu and Heywood's relative by marriage, Albemarle Bertie.

[72] Finally, Heywood maintained he had intended to join Bligh but had been stopped: "...on hearing it suggested that I should be deem'd Guilty if I staid in the Ship, I went down directly, and in passing Mr. Cole told him in a low tone of voice that I would fetch a few necessaries in a Bag and follow him into the Boat, which at that time I meant to do but was afterwards prevented.

William Peckover, Bounty's gunnery officer, affirmed that if he had stayed aboard the ship in the hope of retaking her, he would have looked to Heywood for assistance.

Lord Hood added: "In consideration of various circumstances, the court did humbly and most earnestly recommend the said Peter Heywood and James Morrison to His Majesty's Royal Mercy.

[83] On the specific recommendation of Lord Hood, who had offered the young man his personal patronage, Heywood resumed his naval career as a midshipman aboard his uncle Thomas Pasley's ship HMS Bellerophon.

[85] Although Bligh had departed on his second breadfruit expedition in August 1791 as a national hero, the court martial had revealed damaging evidence of his erratic and overbearing behaviour.

In March 1795, doubts about his eligibility as a convicted mutineer for further promotion were set aside and his advancement to full lieutenant's rank was approved, despite his lacking the stated minimum of six years' service at sea.

"[12][100] James Horsburgh, who was hydrographer to the East India Company, wrote that Heywood's work had "essentially contributed to making my Sailing Directory for the Indian navigation much more perfect than it would otherwise have been.

He then took Nereus to South America where he remained for three years, earning the gratitude of the British merchants in that region for his work in protecting trade routes.

[106] Caroline Alexander suggests that throughout his later career Heywood suffered a sense of guilt over his pardon,[108] knowing that he had "perjured himself" in saying that he was kept below and therefore prevented from joining Bligh.

The couple had no children but, apart from his daughter in Tahiti, there is a suggestion in a will which he signed in 1810 that Heywood had also fathered a British child—the will makes provision for one Mary Gray, "an infant under my care and protection".

Sir John Barrow's book published in 1831, instigated the legend that Fletcher Christian had not died on Pitcairn, but had somehow returned to England and been recognised by Heywood in Plymouth, around 1808–1809.

[120] It is generally accepted that Christian, who had taken the Bounty to Pitcairn Island and founded a colony there with a group of hard core mutineers and conscripted Tahitians, was killed in 1793 during a feud.